


stumbling, looking in the dark

by rilla



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Ficlet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-30 01:10:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5144789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rilla/pseuds/rilla
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'Everyone always thinks Louis is just hilarious and cutting and sarcastic when he’s actually just deeply honest and doesn’t like very many things. The only person who ever believed him is Zayn, and Zayn’s long gone now.' University AU.</p>
            </blockquote>





	stumbling, looking in the dark

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt 'zouis, exes who still have feelings for each other'. Melodramatic and angsty and self-indulgent. Title taken from Home.

Going to see Harry’s terrible band is always a stupid idea. They’re awful and boring and Harry seems to use the whole thing mostly as an opportunity to show off his new red sparkly boots. Louis squints critically at them from the back of the room and shouts judgemental things in Liam’s ear over the music. Liam just laughs as though he doesn’t quite believe that Louis means any of it. He never believes things like that. Everyone always thinks Louis is just hilarious and cutting and sarcastic when he’s actually just deeply honest and doesn’t like very many things. The only person who ever believed him is Zayn, and Zayn’s long gone now.

He’s not dead, although sometimes it feels like he is, the extent to which Louis has had to cut him out of his life. Deleted Zayn’s mates Ant and Danny off Facebook because they occasionally posted pictures of Zayn looking unfairly cheerful and not as though he was in mourning for Louis at all. Unfollowed his sisters on Instagram, even though Waliyha still sometimes likes his pictures when they’re especially arty and aren’t of things like Niall having a sneaky hungover puke. He’s stopped going to his Wednesday afternoon Greek theatre lectures because Zayn has his Romantic Poetry seminar upstairs in the same building just afterwards and Louis always used to run helter skelter up the stairs when the lecture was over to find him waiting outside the seminar room door, so he could press him against the wall and kiss him slow and dirty so Zayn blushed and gasped against his mouth. Also, Greek theatre is shit and boring. Really, skipping the lecture has worked out in a myriad of ways for Louis.

“THIS IS SHIT,” Louis observes as a guitarist goes into an endless solo. “THE DRUMMER’S OUT OF TIME.”

“Oh Louis,” Liam says, his eyes going all crinkly as he laughs.

Louis rolls his eyes savagely at Liam and says “I NEED A PISS.”

He shoves his way to the back of the room. He hates this particular campus pub. It’s stupid and although it pretends to be Irish, it isn’t really, even though they dye their Guinness green for St Patrick’s Day. Unnatural food colouring is another thing that Louis hates. One of the first times he knew he was in love with Zayn was when he saw him eyeing a bright blue slushie with the same revulsion that Louis felt. _Now that’s a sensible lad worth getting to know_ , Louis told himself at the time. He knows now that he was wrong. Zayn wasn’t sensible. Zayn wasn’t worth getting to know. Zayn was a waste of time and energy and he’s tired of his throat getting tight every time he thinks about him. He’s had break ups before, for relationships that were longer and more serious even, but this one feels worse somehow. He thinks that it’s because he wasn’t ready for it. He wasn’t prepared. He wasn’t even ready with a snappy comeback because of how sad and regretful Zayn’s eyes had looked, and how shocked Louis had been by it. How he’d understood, despite himself. That Zayn wasn’t ready for something so serious, that they were both young, that they’d been accepted to teacher training programs on opposite ends of the country for the next year. How Zayn had thought it was more sensible to cut their losses now, rather than being even more heartbroken later on.

Good plan. Not.

Louis needs a cigarette. Being fine is exhausting. His housemates keep trying to knock on his door and make sure he’s all right, Liam with cups of tea and Niall with spurious excuses. Harry even, although they haven’t particularly got on for a while now. He mostly just shows up with a sympathetic ear and a load of time on his hands, but as Louis is fine he never takes advantage of it. The alternative would be worse. Sometimes he thinks about it: waking up Liam at two in the morning, crawling into his bed and admitting “I’m sad.” He knows Liam would be sympathetic. He knows Niall would take him out on the lash and to help him forget his problems. He knows that Harry would listen to him and say gentle, careful things, but Louis feels like throwing himself against a brick wall and howling like a wolf into the abyss instead of being treated with care. Gathering all the bits of himself together again and trying to make himself into a person again is hard enough without having to talk to anyone and shatter apart all over again. He doesn’t want to have to do that work again, building himself up. He’s not sure he could. He thinks he might just turn into a wolf and end up howling forever.

Outside the pub there’s an alleyway. Another reason Louis hates it here is because he remembers Zayn pressing him up against the wall, a laugh on his lips and his hands on Louis’s belt buckle, all lean strength and honey deep eyes in the lamplight. “Do you love me?” he’d asked against Louis’s neck like it was a normal conversation, and Louis had admitted “Yeah. Yes. I do. I love you,” and Zayn had pressed his hips against Louis’s and said “Me too,” and Louis had thought that it was forever, maybe. A forever of waking up next to Zayn and tracing the fern on the back of his neck with a fingertip and observing his sleeping profile in dim winter morning light. Now it’s almost summer and university if almost over and nothing is good anymore and forever is nothing, and waking up is harder alone.

He lights a cigarette and wishes he was more drunk, but alcohol’s had a funny melancholy effect on him lately, had him gasping deep breaths in the moonlight and struggling to get himself home when once he laughed the most and dragged Liam and Niall onto the dancefloor, where Harry always inevitably was already. Dragged Zayn on later, slung his arms around his neck and smiled at him under the bright lights and later on in the dark corners, Zayn kissing his neck and pulling at the neckline of his t-shirt to press his mouth onto Louis’s collarbone. He exhales into the cool night air and leans against the wall and wishes himself back in time. February maybe, or March. Any time in spring. Zayn coming to see him in the Easter holidays and charming his mum and putting his hand over his mouth when they were fucking later, and his sisters giving them scandalised looks the next morning.

He has to swallow a laugh after that, half choking on it, and it’s then that he sees the shadow. The face is dark but Louis recognises him anyway, recognises Zayn’s lean body and stupid skinny legs and the tilt of his jaw. More than anything he recognises Zayn’s voice, soft and cool as he says, “Hi.”

“I’m trying to have a good night,” Louis says. His heart’s doing something awful in his chest. Maybe he’s about to die. Maybe it’ll be Zayn’s fault if he does and Zayn will go to prison. Serve him right. “Will you please just fuck off?”

“You look like you’re having a lovely night. I forgot how much you liked empty pissy alleyways.” Zayn takes a few steps forward and God, his face, his fucking face. Louis knows he’s good-looking but he doesn’t give a shit about that: he always loved the way Zayn smiled with his whole face, the sides of his nose wrinkling. The freckle on his pupil and the uncertainty of the set of his mouth. The way he made himself almost ugly when he was laughing too hard. Louis managed to make him look like that a lot. They had a lot of laughs, the pair of them.

“You remember this alleyway specifically?” Louis asks, willing Zayn to have kept it in his heart like Louis did, to have held onto all the memories with furious aching hands.

Zayn glances around, thoughtful. “S’pose I do,” he says, almost noncommittal in a way that makes Louis want to smack him in the face.

“Good.” Louis exhales. “ _Now_ will you fuck off?”

“No,” Zayn says.

For some reason Louis hadn’t been expecting that. “Oh,” he says.

“I was going to text you,” Zayn says.

“Really?” Louis feels like hope has punctured his chest. “Why?”

“Why not? Because I miss you.” He’s smiling in that terrible way that Louis remembers. He wants to be angry but instead he sort of wants to cry, so he just stares at Zayn instead, setting his jaw and hoping nothing’s trembling. “I mean, I didn’t want to hurt you,” Zayn continues, and frowns, his mouth a thoughtful, pensive line.

Louis is clearly going to have to punch him. “Do you honestly think that was your decision to make?” he says. “You’re such a fucking dildo.”

“Charming,” Zayn says sarcastically, looking charmed anyway and taking another step towards Louis.

Louis flicks his cigarette on the floor. “Anyway, I have to go now,” he announces. He’s afraid something terrible will happen, like kissing or crying or both.

“Liam told me you were a mess,” Zayn says.

“Liam is a lying little shithead,” Louis explains.

“Of course,” Zayn says. He tilts his head to one side and Louis feels his gaze on him, thick and heavy and as though he’s remembering what Louis looks like naked. He suddenly remembers Zayn between his thighs, the wiry weight of him, and feels himself flush and look away.

“I really do have to go,” he says, hoping it sounds more real this time. “Harry’s band’s playing. I should watch the end of the set.”

“Should you?” Zayn makes a face. “Have they massively improved?”

“No,” Louis says. “My ears were bleeding. But, you know. He’ll do that face.”

“This one.” Zayn sticks his bottom lip out and widens his eyes, looking impossibly hangdog.

“Exactly.” They share a smile and Louis feels warm inside. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget the way Zayn understood him. He’s hoping he’ll be able to think about that years from now, when it’s stopped hurting, even though right now he feels like it never will. He hopes he’ll be happy it happened, one day. He huffs out a sigh. “How are you so okay?” he asks.

“What?” Zayn says, furrowing his eyebrows.

“You said – we said all that stuff.” _That you loved me_ , he wants to add, and does not. “And that doesn’t just fucking go, does it? Does it?”

“No,” Zayn admits softly. “Do I really seem okay? I mean.” He sighs a bit. “I’m not. Come here.” He doesn’t give Louis the chance, just darts towards him and grabs his hand, hand warm and dry and strong, and he presses Louis’s hand onto his own chest, over his heart, eyes dark as he looks into Louis’s. “Feel how fast my heart’s beating.”

“I don’t actually know what a normal heartbeat feels like,” Louis says. “For all I know, you could be extremely relaxed.”

“You always did ruin all of my romantic gestures,” Zayn says.

“You broke up with me,” Louis points out.

“I did, didn’t I?” Zayn says. “I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have.” And that’s it: that’s the last straw, and Louis has to leave. Fuck Harry’s gig, fuck Liam inside who’s probably got him another pint by now. He needs to get home and get into bed and maybe then he’ll phone his mum and tell her what happened and let his voice falter and crack and fall away eventually. She hasn’t found the right words to heal him yet but he thinks maybe she’ll keep on trying.

He turns and stalks away down the alleyway, into the road and towards the light. From behind him there are footsteps and a voice. “Louis, can't we be friends?”

“We were never fucking friends!” Louis hurls over his shoulder, and then Zayn’s caught up to him, Zayn’s next to him, Zayn’s grabbing his arm and Louis is throwing him off and away and spitting “Fuck you,” and then somehow they’re kissing. Louis isn’t sure how it happened but he does know that maybe he’s the one who did the kissing because he feels Zayn freeze and then relax like he’s giving himself over, pliant and sweet against him, throwing an arm around Louis’s neck and pulling him in. His mouth is familiar and his kiss is hard and good, and Louis feels like maybe finally he can breathe again after weeks of hurt.

“Come on,” Zayn says, after a moment. He’s breathing hard, forehead pressed against Louis’s. “Come on, then, babe.” Louis can feel Zayn shivering despite the relatively warm night, can feel his leg shaking against his. Zayn pulls away just a little, looks into Louis’s eyes. “Let’s go home,” he says, and Louis nods, hard and jerky. They knot their hands together down by their sides, shoulders pressed close as they walk, Zayn pulling him through the familiar walk back to his place, the one they made together countless times when things were simpler. It seems uncertain and the future seems rocky and strange, something that Louis will have to navigate through and learn to understand. A year apart, if there’s more than tonight, and then God knows what afterwards. He’s ready for that. He’s ready to hurt again, if he has to. He just wants tonight.

Louis squeezes Zayn’s hand. “I miss you too,” he says, and Zayn shrugs, biting his lip. 

“Maybe now you won’t have to,” he says, and even though his eyes are shadowed and his words are soft and uncertain, Louis somehow believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally posted [here](http://flomps.tumblr.com/post/132509568416/zouis-exes-who-still-have-feelings-for-each-other). Feel free to say hi on tumblr at flomps or twitter at foracorkscrew!


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